Hamish Macdonell

IT IS unlikely that any decision Alex Salmond has taken as First Minister hurt as much as the expected ditching of his plans to get a bill through this parliament paving the way for a referendum on independence.

DAVID Miliband was still at Oxford University when he first accepted an invitation to holiday in Argyll. One of the other holidaymakers, Lord Foulkes recalls: "It was 22 years ago. We were in a large house in Skipness for 14 days and it rained for 13 of them. We played a lot of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly and, I can tell you, David doesn't like to lose."

More top stories

THE stuffy Commons air was heavy with anticipation. The gangways, benches and even the main entrance to the members' lobby beyond were all jammed with MPs eager to hear what the Conservative Chancellor would announce in this, the new administration's first Budget.

THE timing was no coincidence. As the scratchy call to prayer stretched out across the sea from the PA system on Turkish passenger ferry the Mavi Marmara, so the Israeli commandos moved in. It had just gone 4am on Monday, and most of those on the lead ship in the aid flotilla sailing sedately through the eastern Mediterranean towards Gaza were on the aft deck, lowering their heads in pre-dawn prayer.

DAVID Cameron looked straight into the sitting rooms of millions of voters. "If you vote Conservative on Thursday, you can have a new, fresh government, making a clean break and taking our country in a new direction and bringing the change that we need," he said.

FOR anybody who has even glanced at Scottish politics at any time over the last 50 years, there was one statistic which would have leapt out from the European election results yesterday morning: of Scotland's 32 local authority areas, 22 voted SNP.

IT IS 11 November, the clock strikes 11 and the nation falls silent. Dignitaries, civic and military, pause for two minutes all over the country and then step forward to lay commemorative wreaths at war memorials. It is solemn, it is respectful and it is official.

THE expenses scandal currently consuming the House of Commons is a tale of two bunkers: one is the bunker at The Daily Telegraph offices in London where the devastating material is kept, seen only by a chosen few, and the other is the mentality over at the Palace of Westminster where MPs are cowering, fearful of the barrage to come.

'WHY don't we hear more about it? Why isn't there any coverage?" he asked. The questioner was at a European hustings event last Friday that kicked off the European election campaign in Scotland. There were 20 or 30 people there to hear three MEPs and one would-be MEP appeal for their votes.

THERE was definitely something reassuring about the story in one of the weekend tabloids – "vice madam" to "name and shame four high-flying Tories", it claimed. Suddenly it seemed as if everything was right with the world, political scandals were back where they were supposed to be.

OUR five-year-old son has a voice that can carry the length of the country's biggest supermarkets. He demonstrated this perfectly the other day when he saw one of the many publicity stands promoting Quantum of Solace on DVD.

JUST occasionally, politicians come up with ideas that show, without a shadow of a doubt, that they just don't get it. Labour's Scottish front-bench team came up with one recently. We need a "superbug tsar" they cried. The threat of infection in our hospitals is so acute, they said, that we need to put someone in charge.

SO THE referendum is dead. Scots will not get the chance to vote on independence in the lifetime of this parliament. That's clear. It must be, after all the three main opposition parties have united in condemning the plans and insist they will not change their minds this side of the 2011 election.

MIKE Russell is the one senior SNP figure that some hard-core, woad-wearing Nationalists love to hate. He is confident, even arrogant, he is a writer, a broadcaster and (whisper it quietly) he is English-born.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.